Healthy Skepticism To Greet Microsoft's Tablet PC LaunchHealthy Skepticism To Greet Microsoft's Tablet PC Launch

Microsoft is planning a splashy launch event Thursday to introduce the long-touted Tablet PC, but a lean marketplace crowded with doubtful and tight-fisted IT buyers awaits the new device.

In a sign of that skepticism, Gartner Dataquest predicts the Tablet PC will account for only 425,000 units in 2003, or 1.2% of worldwide notebook shipments.

"Tablet PCs will have a natural fit in many vertical applications that currently use pen-based tablets," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says. "However, a lack of application support, clumsy hardware designs, and a price premium will be barriers for most users."

Initial purchases will be by businesses buying batches of 10 or less for evaluation, along with consumer and business-executive early adopters, Gartner says. There will be an initial spike in sales, eventually leveling out.

Criticize the device if you like, but it's a new form with lots of gee-whiz appeal.

The Tablet PC is about the size and weight of a conventional notebook computer, but the screen is on the top, like an Etch-a-Sketch, rather than having the clamshell design of conventional notebooks. Input is done with a pen interface, although some Tablet PCs will also have keyboards. The pen interface will use handwriting recognition to input data, as well as a new type of data that Microsoft calls "digital ink," in which the software captures images of what the user writes on the screen. The units are expected to start at about $2,500.

Hewlett-Packard will make a unit with an optional detachable keyboard, and Acer and Toshiba will make convertible units with swivels to operate as conventional notebooks or as tablets with the keyboards hidden away inside. Four other vendors plan Tablet PCs without keyboards.

Microsoft is far from the first company attempting to commercialize pen computing. It's preceded by a long parade of failures, including Agilis, Apple, Eo, General Magic, Go, Grid, Momenta, and Microsoft itself about 10 years ago.

Microsoft says previous efforts failed because of poor design and the fact that computer hardware at the time was not powerful enough to meet demands. Microsoft says the Tablet PC will be the standard form factor for PCs, more popular than the current notebook and desktop form factors. Bill Gates, Microsoft's chief software architect, says a prototype Tablet PC is already his computer of choice.

Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin is cautious but upbeat about the Tablet PC future. He's been using one for about five months and says it's addictive.

While the handwriting recognition is crude, digital ink has proven to be a powerful tool, Bajarin says. Digital ink doesn't just capture dumb images as the user writes on the screen; it can break the images up into individual words, identify keywords in text, perform handwriting recognition on just those words, then store and index information by keyword or time.

The convertible tablet units, with keyboards and pen input, will probably be most popular, at least initially, especially with salespeople who can use them for presentations.

"Its initial markets will be vertical," Bajarin says, "but I agree that in the long term, based on the design and the software, it could become the portable platform of the future."